


I Dream of Stone

by Shellepink



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Aeducan somehow in the Fade, Extrapolation from given lore in the game, Gen, Solas in the Fade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 14:55:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9187163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shellepink/pseuds/Shellepink
Summary: Solas encounters something - or someone - rather unexpected in the Fade.





	

Solas never saw the dreams of dwarves.  Often he would see the spirits of the Fade recreate the image of a surface dwarf, or an Orzammar exile, using the memories of a human or an elf to aid them.  But never had there been a dwarven mind open to them for exploration.  Ever did the stone caverns of the once great dwarven empire elude them in the Fade, appearing only as a deep and endless blackness, a mystery which the spirits could only guess at as they clustered curiously by the lands just beyond the Frostback Mountains. 

It was frustrating, Solas knew, to have no access to something so grand and exciting because the minds of those mortals who experienced it were inaccessible.  The separation of dwarves from the Fade was keenly felt by some spirits, who often turned for inspiration to the memories of humans and elves who had entered Orzammar and the Deep Roads.  Grey Wardens were particularly popular.

When Solas came across such curious spirits willing to go so far to learn of the dwarves, he often stopped and settled nearby to watch their eager experimentation.  

The spirits he currently observed danced about in excitement as they built their own Orzammar from Fade rock and the strength of their own will.  Solas smiled as the towers and spires rose from nothing, noting that these spirits must not be familiar with the minds of humans or elves who had descended to the Deep Roads.  There were no spires in the memories and dreams that Solas had witnessed.  There was nothing that did not serve some purpose. There was nothing so fluid as might be seen in elven architecture.  The dwarves were sturdy, grounded, part of the stone itself, and their buildings reflected that: sharp and hard with purposeful angular lines.  They did not look to the sky as his people had.  

The spirits’ finished product turned out to be an odd combination of randomly placed stone and familiar human and elven designs.  Solas felt the spirits’ excitement and laughed as they took the guise of dwarves and danced their triumph.  They were like children.

Perhaps they would one day correct their… inaccuracies with regards to dwarven architecture.  But for the moment, Solas was loathe to ruin their fun.

Standing to his feet, he bowed a silent farewell and began down a familiar path to a different part of the Fade.  He had a particular destination in mind tonight.

A new mind had entered the Fade in Skyhold, and Solas was helpless against its call.  

It was dwarven.

Earlier that very day the King of Orzammar, Hero of Ferelden, and beloved Paragon of his people, Gundhram Aeducan, had arrived at Skyhold, leading a contingent of Orzammar dwarves.  Solas remembered vividly their arrival: stalwart, ordered, and strong, the dwarves had marched through the mountains, chanting low and deep.  Their axes and armor gleamed in the sunlight and Solas swore he could feel the vibrations of their boots on the ground from the stronghold.

Some had feared that the dwarves’ chanting might cause an avalanche.  But the mountain held her calm, and Solas wondered for a moment if the mountain preferred the presence of dwarves on her paths and peaks to the presence of others.

The dwarves had entered the keep and were given no less than a royal welcome.  During that time, Solas had quietly observed the king.  He was stocky and stout, as all dwarves were, but there was something different about him, something that lent him distinction from all the others.  He stood tall, somehow taller than all those around him, elf and human alike, and his kingly armor and adornments only confirmed what his bearing already revealed: he was a warrior.  He was at home on a battlefield, defending his people or building an empire, as a leader would do, as a hero would do.  His pride and confidence had been earned, hard-won in constant battles against many adversaries.

Oddly enough it was that pride which initially drew Solas to this dwarf.  For no matter how many years separated Solas from his days as Fen’Harel, he was still a warrior, and he held to his pride from those days.  Pride he could see was shared by this dwarf king.

It had to be this king, this warrior, whose mind was calling to Solas now in the Fade.

Solas was eager to answer the call.  His curiosity would not be satisfied until he had investigated.  The thought gave Solas pause for a moment, and he inclined his head in rueful touch.  His curiosity would be the death of him, his mother had once said.   _Mother, I am afraid you have no idea…_  He resumed his stride.

When Solas reached the site of the dwarf king’s presence, he pulled in a breath of interest.  The king was surrounded by spirits, their attention arrested by his very existence in the Fade.  Solas chuckled.   _It seems I was not the only one who heard his mind._

Yet even as the spirits huddled and swayed and absorbed the dwarf’s presence, they kept their distance. Even here, in this foreign realm, it seemed this mortal was recognized for his kingly air.

Aeducan stood still for a moment, seeming to contemplate something.  The spirits held a collective breath.  Then the dwarf turned, clasped his hands at his back, and began to meander down an unseen path, hidden to all but him.  The spirits and Solas moved to follow.

Soon, a tentative spirit slid forward, gliding to the dwarf’s side.  Aeducan paused and the spirit reached out, enveloping the dwarf’s head in light.  Solas waited in curious silence.  What would this dwarf’s mind reveal?  What memories did he hold dear, which would he allow to be seen?  

The spirit began to change, and in a moment took the guise of a young dwarf boy, perhaps nine or ten years old.  Aeducan smiled and reached down to the boy.  

“There’s my lad!” he bellowed, pride rumbling his voice.  The boy – spirit – laughed as Aeducan hefted him up and held him to the sky, surveying him with fond and approving eyes.  Somewhere to Solas’s left, a thin voice, light as a breath, whispered, “ _Endrin_.”  

Aeducan continued to speak heartily to the boy, and after a moment another spirit grew bold enough to reach into the dwarf’s memories.  From them came another child, another boy, near the same age as the first.  Aeducan let out a great bark of a laugh.  

“How did I miss you there, my little stone-shaper!”  

The spirit reached for the man in childish eagerness.  “Father!” Shifting the first child to one hip, Aeducan bent to pull the other one into his free arm.  Yet again, Solas heard the gentle voice speak, “ _Gorim._ ”  Solas nodded. His children.

“When are you coming home, father?” the first boy, Endrin, asked. “I’m better now than when you left, I can disarm you, I bet!”

“Ha!  You’ll just get knocked onto your arse again, like last time!” the second boy, Gorim, retorted.  Endrin turned bright red and reached across Aeducan’s shoulders to swipe at his brother.  

“Says the dung-sniffer who can’t even _hold_ an axe!”

“Hey, at least I can read an entire–!”  His protest was abruptly cut off as Aeducan roughly jostled the two boys.  

“Enough, my boys, enough!” he commanded, amusement coloring his voice.  He turned and surveyed each of the boys with narrowed eyes, playful in his reprimand.  “Or do you want me to fetch your mothers?”  

Gorim sniffed and turned away, while Endrin huffed and buried his face in his father’s beard. Aeducan laughed again, and again Solas heard the voice:

“ _Rica._ ”  

“ _Mardy._ ”

The mothers, and Aeducan’s wives.   _Consorts?_  Solas wondered for a moment what these women looked like, what traits of these boys came from their respective mothers, and which from their father.

He was pulled from his musings when the group of spirits surrounding Aeducan began to move in earnest. Warmth flared in his soul as he watched the spirits glide and float, selecting bits of Aeducan’s memory to recreate, to reshape in the Fade, fitting them all together like a puzzle.

Solas observed in awe as great stone pillars climbed from the ground, rocks and stones falling into place behind, above, and below them.  Intricate carvings, in a language Solas didn’t know, appeared on the walls, the ceilings, the floors.  He pulled in a breath to keep himself steady as he turned, spun, saw, memorized every detail of the great dwarven structures etched into Aeducan’s memory.

Orzammar from the memories of one of her children.  Golden and warm and colored with the red of the stone, Solas could see clearly how it fought not to fall to nothingness and obscurity.  He could see how she stood against the forces that would have her bowed and broken had they their way.  She would not go quietly, Solas could see.

As he watched, the walls shifted, shimmered, crumbled and took new form.   _A new memory?_

Now they formed ruins. Shattered stone, ground to dust and left for the darkspawn.  As the Deep Roads slowly shaped themselves from Aeducan’s memories, shadowy figures flitted past, lurking in the dark with beady eyes and unnatural forms.  Solas’s eyes narrowed.   _Darkspawn_.  

The darkspawn hissed and spat, but either Aeducan’s memories of them were hazy, or he was being selective about what he allowed the spirits to see, for they remained little more than dark silhouettes.

The scene shifted again, and suddenly the enclosed walls of the Deep Roads opened, and Solas found himself standing in a great cavern, his breath stolen away yet again as he watched the structures form.

Towers, equal parts hard and elegant, erupted from the ground, etchings and carvings climbing along their rock walls, forming words and creating images the likes of which Solas had never seen before.  Bridges joined themselves over underground streams, and the blue glow of lyrium spread throughout the great city, harnessed by the dwarves for lights and decorations.   _Beautiful…_  

And then it all cracked. Solas watched in horror as the glow of the lyrium slowly disappeared, the bridges fell to disrepair, and the towers began to crumble.  For a moment, he wanted to try and stop it all.  For a moment, he wanted to step in and keep Aeducan’s hopes for the glory of the old thaigs alive, but he held himself in check.  Even if Aeducan’s hopes remained intact, there was nothing either of them could do for the ruins of the ancient dwarves in the mortal realm.

That knowledge, that one certainty, pulled at something in Solas’s chest.

 _This_ was what the dwarves had lost!   _This!_ This was what was left of their great empire, and even though it was all in ruins, even though it was destroyed, rank with darkspawn stink and severed from that which once made it great, Solas could see it still held majesty. It was grand and glorious, and it had clung to its strength, to its pride.  The sight brought Solas to his knees.

He knew this sight too well. Knew it in the great spires reaching ever skyward.  In the long stretches of paths, roadways that connected a vast empire in ancient times. In the libraries that had once existed between worlds.  In the mirrors that offered so much more than mere reflection.  In magic that once was, but which now no longer existed in the mortal world.

In temples deep in the jungles and forests of the world, overcome by foliage and lost to time, but standing tall nevertheless.  In sacred statues whose meaning was long lost on the ones who called themselves the descendants of Solas’s people.  In the stories he longed to tell, the memories of his people, the truth of their deeds, both good and bad.

Yes, Solas knew that loss, knew what it was to be a limb severed from the torso, lost and useless and utterly _dead_.  

He turned his eyes back to Aeducan.  The king had begun to make his way toward a far entrance in the Fade’s construct, the two spirit boys still held close.  This time, Solas did not follow him.  He stood to his feet and walked to one of the construct’s walls.  For a moment he surveyed it in silence, a sickly feeling tearing at his chest.  Then he reached out and placed a hand upon it.  A breathy voice spoke.

“We didn’t quite get it. It feels like the rocks of the Fade, doesn’t it?”  

Solas smiled.  “I did not expect you to be able to recreate every sensation written into the dwarf’s memory.”  A familiar spirit stepped forward and placed a glowing hand upon the wall beside Solas’s.

“No, but I would like to know how dwarf-stone feels to my fingers.”

 _Or any stone_ , Solas thought shamefully.  Which may well never happen.  Because of him.

“For now, this will do, though,” the spirit said softly, and Solas quickly silenced his thoughts.

“It is far more than I would ever have expected,” Solas mused, surveying the great Orzammar copy. “Do you know how this dwarf managed to enter the Fade?”  Beside him the spirit shrugged.

“He has been able to enter the Fade for many years now,” it admitted. “I’m afraid to say, this concept of ‘years’ still confuses me, but I’ve heard whispers of ten…  Years?  Does that sound right?”

Solas’s eyes twinkled. “If it is true, then it sounds right, yes.”  The spirit huffed beside him.

“Oh, enough out of you. No matter.  All I am sure of is that he has been here before.”

“Hm.”  The two lapsed into companionable silence and continued their observations.  Solas saw that this spirit had taken the form of a dwarf and bit back a smile.  To these spirits, the presence of a dwarven mind among them must be akin to a child receiving a cherished gift on their name-day.

“So now we have Orzammar in our Fade…”  

Solas faced the spirit. Its bearded lips lifted into a smile and it winked.  “We have grown today, Fade-walker.”  Solas could feel the spirit’s excitement and reached out with his magic.

“Indeed you have,” he agreed, carefully not thinking of the reason that spirits like this were kept from the wealth of knowledge they could have had at their fingertips. “In knowledge well worth having, I think.”  The spirit nodded.

“I should like to find more dwarven minds in the Fade,” it declared, looking to the stones of Orzammar, and Solas knew it was more moved by this sight than perhaps any other in the Fade. “If there is this one, then there must be more, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps,” Solas agreed carefully. “If it is your goal to find them, then I think it a worthy endeavor.”

“Of course you do,” the spirit laughed, already turning to follow the trail of the dwarf. “I am unfailingly Curious, but you are the one who truly embodies Curiosity!  Anything in the pursuit of knowledge!”  The spirit bounded ahead, turning back once more to bow in a dwarven fashion learned from Aeducan’s memories.  “Dream well, Solas!”

Solas gave a bow of his own, feeling nostalgic as his mind performed a traditional salutation of his people.  “Dareth shiral.”  The spirit disappeared.  

Dream well… _Then dream I shall._

He dreamt of towering stone castles, stretching tall from the earth, filled with the chants of Paragons and great traditions.  He dreamt of beautiful spires reaching skyward, piercing the clouds and singing of glorious times long fallen to lengthy slumber, lost to time and arrogance.

He dreamt well.


End file.
